Jack McCaffery is the lead sports columnist for the Daily Times and delcotimes.com. He has spent several decades covering everything from the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers and Sixers, to college hoops, to high school sports in Delco.

Sunday, October 30, 2011

A SEASON SAVER

The Eagles didn't say so, but they knew: Either they would win Sunday night or essentially call it a lost season.

They won, 34-7, over the Cowboys ... and have repositioned themselves as the leading threat to win the NFC East.

Juan Castillo's defense doesn't look too wide. LeSean McCoy looks like an MVP. The offensive line, finally together as planned, is giving Michael Vick time to create points. Even Asante Samuel is smiling, saying, "I hope you had the Philadelphia Eagles as your fantasy team."

Dallas defensive coordinator Rob Ryan had accused the Birds of being over-hyped. They were not. For most of the early season, they had underachieved. But they were not overhyped. Two different things. They were hyped because they are so deep in talent. That talent is showing with enough time left in the season to matter.

Check out my column in the Daily Times Monday, and as always, on delcotimes.com

Sunday nights victory over the cowboys was only the first step in saveing the season for the eagles. This mondays game against the bears will be step 2 and step 3 and 4 follow imediately afterwards. As a result of an early 4 game loseing streak they have managed to move the most critical part of the season to one of its earliest positions in recent years. two years ago it was that final week of the season in dallas when we had the chance to take control of the nfc playoffs and earn a bye and instead we ended up with an embarassing loss and a trip back to dallas as a wild card,we repeated our performance in the wild card game and went home early. Last year we again set the stage for a playoff run when we made that great comeback in the giants game and followed it up with a real klunker against the viking practice squad on a tuesday night blizard nightmare which lead us to faceing the packers here wildcard weekend instead of having a week off and we all know how that turned out. The truth of the matter is that if the eagles lose one of the next three game they may still make the playoffs but if they want to be in position to do anything in the playoffs which after all is really all that matters at this point,they need to win the next three games to truely SAVE THE SEASON